Mexico city’s centre: its densification, is it an adverse scenario?

Abstract

The traditional level of attraction that Mexico City’s urban center has exerted on its
population since its foundation in 1325 has been for the very first time in history seriously affected. In that context, this article exposes the significant depopulation process that took place on that core during the 1970’s. Taking into consideration that densification of already abandoned areas is difficult to achieve, this work is based on the 1990-2000 development trends from the Mexican official censuses to linearly extrapolate, estimating in densification expectations terms, which will be the attraction capacity trends by 2025 of Delegación Política Cuauhtemoc, one of the most representative city cores composed by a set of old districts. The estimations made on the population groups considered as the most representative in this area (male, female, senior +65, children 0-14, married, and single), found that those populations will oscillate around 30-80% of the 1970 original densification to the 2025 planning threshold. In spite of that temporarily unfavourable scenario to recuperate 100% its 1970 demography in the short run, this work concludes that Cuahtémoc’s future attraction expectations are promising to later thresholds, from the job/housing local production perspective.